The NHS long term plan must avoid promising too much
06 January 2019
- Prime minister Theresa May and health and social care secretary Matt Hancock have given interviews ahead of the publication of the NHS long term plan.
- The plan includes ambitions to improving outcomes for all major conditions, provide the best maternity care in the world and include £2.3 billion of additional investment for mental health services.
- The plan also proposes increases in the NHS workforce and to bring the NHS into the digital age, including online GP booking, prescriptions management and health records.
- The NHS long term plan is expected to be published tomorrow (Monday 7 January).
Speaking ahead of the publication of the NHS long term plan, the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, said:
“No one is more ambitious than NHS trusts to deliver world class standards of care for patients and service users and it is right that we should aim high.
“But the funding settlement – while welcome – does little more than cover rising costs and demand.
After the best part of a decade of austerity, there’s a lot of catching up to be done – both in terms of performance against the main NHS targets, and finance.
“We’re also constrained by severe workforce shortages.
“And after the best part of a decade of austerity, there’s a lot of catching up to be done – both in terms of performance against the main NHS targets, and finance.
“To plan is to choose.
We must avoid an undeliverable wish list that makes too many promises as over promising sets the NHS up to fail.
“The NHS frontline wants an ambitious plan but, above all, a realistic and deliverable plan. A plan that ruthlessly prioritises what the NHS will deliver, clearly setting out how those priorities match the money and staff available. A plan that’s crystal clear on how the NHS will recover the ground we’ve lost on finance and performance, that solves current workforce shortages and is realistic about how any new commitments are going to be paid for and staffed.
“We must avoid an undeliverable wish list that makes too many promises as over promising sets the NHS up to fail.”